Faked in Japan.

Frey, Jennifer

It was the kind of titillating television documentary that had viewers talking for days. A new breed of Japanese woman, the TV Asahi network's hour-long documentary claimed, was chasing foreign men and offering them gifts in exchange for sex. High and lurid drama, for sure. But it was, as one newspaper put it, "Sex, Lies and Faked Scenes."

According to the Tokyo Journal, an English-language monthly that exposed the story, both the seductive Japanese woman clad in tight evening clothes and high heels and the U.S. Air Force serviceman dripping in gold jewelry were hired to play the roles. TV Asahi took responsibility for the bogus program, which was produced with the aid of an outside production company.

If NBC is looking for some consolation, it can find plenty of company in Japan. Staging the news is so commonplace that the Japanese have a word for it: yarase.

"In America, it's the exception rather than the rule," says Newsweek's Tokyo Bureau Chief Bill Powell. "Here it's just standard operating procedure. There is a much greater latitude given to producers to set things up if it doesn't work out." Adds Dorian Benkoil, an Associated Press editor who researched Japanese media on a Fulbright journalism fellowship: "In the U.S. the lines between entertainment and news are blurring recently. In Japan they never developed."

In recent months, a string of staged news events and fabricated incidents has received extensive publicity. The most high-profile one involved the publicly funded Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), which is generally held to higher standards than its commercial competitors.

NHK admitted--after a Tokyo newspaper broke the story--about a dozen scenes in a two-part documentary aired last fall, titled "Mustang: The Secluded Kingdom in the Remote Himalayas," were either "different from reality," exaggerated or questionable. In an effort to dramatize the harshness of the secluded Nepal region, the four-member camera crew taped one member feigning altitude sickness, crew members braving a river crossing and a staged sandslide. For another faked scene, a young monk was given a pair of cloth shoes "as a token of gratitude" for allowing them to film him praying for rain. According to an NHK spokesman, some of the incidents had occurred--only not at the time of filming. (NHK did determine that the river crossing episode was permissible because it was too dangerous to film at the actual place where the crew had crossed.)

To make matters worse, Masahiro Okada, chief director of the documentary, placed Nissan logo stickers in the rear window of trucks that were filmed in the show. Nissan Motor Co. has a business contract with an NHK affiliate. In order to whip up publicity for the documentary, Okada also arranged for a Himalayan wolf to be shipped from Nepal to a Japanese zoo. The stunt attracted only negative press, however, when it was revealed that exporting the wolf may have violated an international wildlife protection treaty.

Why had Okada staged the scenes? He told an NHK investigating panel, "The feeling was too strong to make that program interesting and attractive to viewers. But now I think it was wrong and I [want] to apologize for it in any form." The 51-year-old director received the stiffest punishment permissable under NHK rules: a six-month suspension. In typical Japanese fashion, NHK President Mikio Kawaguchi made a public apology and offered to resign. His resignation was rejected, but he voluntarily cut his salary 20 percent for six months.

Most journalists here agree that yarase partly stems from the same pressures facing American television networks: ratings. Competition among the many national newspapers and magazines is also intense. Because of the competitiveness among rival papers, if an editor asks a reporter to do something he will do his best. If he fails, he fakes it," says an editor for a tabloid who asked not to be named.

In addition, the Japanese penchant for control and order encourages the media to "create reality," says free-lancer Takao Tokuoka, who wrote for the Japanese daily newspaper Mainichi Shimbun and its English-language counterpart for 30 years.

Author Robert Whiting, known for his books on Japanese baseball, experienced this obsession firsthand. He once arrived for a live radio interview show at NHK and was given a 100-page script with questions he would be asked--plus his answers. "They don't want any surprises," he said. The NHK spokesman responded, "Every program has some purpose. We indicate what sort of matters the listeners will be interested in."

But there is also a tradition of looser journalistic standards compared with the West. The Japanese press was government-controlled until the current constitution was ratified in 1947. Afterwards, Japan adopted western-style journalism, but like so many other things western, molded it to fit Japanese society. For example, "press clubs," originally created by reporters for access to officials now are used by the government and other authorities to exercise considerable control over the media.

Beat reporters must belong to a press club in order to gain access to the people they are covering. Once inside, the dutiful reporter is spoon-fed information and dares not break a story that is not sanctioned by his source for fear of being banned from the club. It even means that some sports writers intentionally inflate the attendance at games of the Yomiuri Giants, Japan's most popular baseball team, says Whiting. "Newspaper reporters lie [because] they're afraid access will be taken away."

As critics see it, voluntarily withholding news of the Crown Prince's search for a bride--which the press did for nearly a year--and fabricating events are just two sides of the same coin (see Free Press, Jan/Feb 1993). "Ethics here is not whether it's right or wrong," says Gregory Starr, editor of the Tokyo Journal. "It's whether you can do it or not."

Robert Orr, director of the Institute for Pacific Rim Studies who also served as a staffer on Capitol Hill for five years, knows all about that. After giving an interview to a freelance reporter writing for Weekly Gendai about the Clinton administration, he was shocked to read the story's headline: "Hillary's Words Destroy America--Robert Orr.' Orr, a staunch Clinton partisan, says he never uttered a single negative word about Hillary. In an attempt to make amends, the reporter signed a letter drafted by Orr stating that the article was "purposely rewritten in a fabricated form...." Senior Editor Masahiko Yamagami denied the story was made up and says the reporter didn't totally understand the letter he signed.

Why don't the defamed stand up and fight? Japan's libel laws are very favorable to the plaintiff, says lawyer Yoichiro Yamakawa, but awards have been minimal, ranging from about $4,000 to $17,000. Whiting says he thought he was once defamed but chose not to challenge it. "I went to see a lawyer and he said, Forget about it. A public insult is forgotten within 40 days.'"

Jennifer Frey is a freelance journalist living in Tokyo.